by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday, Snowbelt Symphony celebrates America (4 pm, New Promise Church in Chardon), No Exit presents the Median Arts Ensemble (7 pm in Kulas Hall at Baldwin Wallace), BW hosts an Alumni Chamber Music Recital (7 pm in Gamble Auditorium), Music at Bath presents the 7-piece ensemble Umojah Nation Reggae (7 pm at Bath Church in Akron), the Cleveland Orchestra plays Beethoven’s piano concertos No. 2 & 4 with Garrick Ohlsson (pictured, 8 pm in Severance Music Center), and Oberlin Opera continues its run of Cendrillon (8 pm in Hall Auditorium).
On Sunday, Oberlin Opera concludes its run of Cendrillon (2 pm in Hall Auditorium), the Gruca White Ensemble “expands the boundaries of the classical experience” (2 pm at Wadsworth Public Library), Eric Benjamin leads the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra with violin soloist Michael Ferri (3 pm at Maltz PAC), the Oberlin Opera continues its run of Cendrillon (8 pm in Hall Auditorium), the Dana Opera Ensemble presents scenes (3 pm at the McDonough Museum in Youngstown), Good Company hosts composer Joel Thompson (4 pm, Lakewood Presbyterian Church), Lakeland Civic Orchestra spotlights Nicholas Jacques in Elgar’s Cello Concert (4 pm, Lakeland Community College, Kirtland), and the BW New Music Series presents new works by composition majors (7 pm in Gamble Auditorium).
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
INTERESTING READ:
A New York Times article by Javier C. Hernàndez reports that violinist Johnny Gandelsman, 46, a recent recipient of a MacArthur Grant, will bring his project, “This is America,” a collection of 28 pieces he has commissioned and begun to record since 2020, to the Met’s American Wing for a marathon performance spread over Friday and Saturday, with the aim to capture the modern American spirit: it’s love and hope, but also its inequality and injustice.
For the project, Gandelsman, who was born in Moscow and grew up in Israel before coming to the United States at 17, provided composers with $5,000 and simple instructions: to write a piece for solo violin that responds to the times we are living in. They responded with a variety of styles, including contemporary classical music, jazz, world music and electronics.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
November 9:
On Saturday, let’s feature two women composers who aren’t very well known (at least in the U.S. in one case), and who were born on this date in history: Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia (1723) and Aleksandra Pakhmutova (1929).
The youngest sister of Frederick II, and eventually the Abbess of Quedlinburg, Anna Amalia was only able to fully delve into musical studies after the death of her father, Frederick I, who was known to be abusive and to find music frivolous.
A multi-instrumentalist, Amalia was also a composer, patron, and collector, having preserved some 600 volumes of music by J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, Handel, Telemann, and others. Not many of her own works survive — some suggest she destroyed them, as she was known to be self-critical — though her catalog includes cantatas, chorales, chamber music, and marches.
Among her most well-known pieces is the Flute Sonata in F, which you can hear on YouTube in a 2019 live performance in Montreal by members of Infusion Baroque playing historical instruments. You can also learn more about Amalia from Episode 1 of that ensemble’s Virtuosa Series.
Jumping forward a couple hundred years, we get to a living composer: Aleksandra Pakhmutova, who is popular in Russia and has received many awards from the state. Her success spans many genres, including orchestral music, ballet, film music, and popular music. And here’s an unexpected (and admittedly minor) Ohio connection: there’s an asteroid bearing her name — it’s been known as “1889 Pakhmutova” since an “official naming citation” was filed in 1976 by the Minor Planet Center, based at the time in Cincinnati.
Before coming back down to earth, let’s spotlight her well-known Trumpet Concerto, which opens with beautifully celestial music — listen here in a performance by the Eastman Graduate Conducting Orchestra, with Samuel Huss as soloist and Peter J. Folliard conducting. And among her library of 400 songs is Good-Bye Moscow, which fittingly served as the farewell tune of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
Other anniversaries to mark today: the death of composer Carl Philipp Stamitz (1801) and the birth of baritone Bryn Terfel (1965).
November 10:
Born in Paris on this date in 1668, François Couperin (“le grand”) was part of a musical dynasty that included both composers and performers. As organist at the Church of Saint-Gervais in Paris, he followed in the footsteps of his father Charles and his uncle Louis, the 2nd-most-famous Couperin.
François also played the harpsichordist, and it is his works for that instrument that have made him most famous. His four collections of solo harpsichord music, numbering over 230 pieces, have been admired by and provided inspiration to such figures as J.S. Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and Thomas Adès.
Les Barricades Mystérieuses is one of the most popular pieces from those suites. For something a little different, listen to a version arranged for harpsichord and lute here, performed here by Jean Rondeau and Thomas Dunford.
On to Mexico. Born in 1912 in Cuerámaro in the state of Guanajuato, Salvador Contreras went on to the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City, where he and three schoolmates — Daniel Ayala, José Pablo Moncayo, and Blas Galindo — enrolled in a composition class taught by the forward-thinking Carlos Chávez.
When that class was dropped from the curriculum, the four composers formed the Grupo de Jóvenes Compositores (“Group of Young Composers”) almost as a show of protest, giving their first concert in 1935. Fortunately a journalist reviewing the concert came up with a snappier name: Grupo de los Cuatro, in the same vein as the Russian “Mighty Five” and the French Les Six.
Before turning to serialism in the mid-1960s — a decision that didn’t appeal to all of his fans — Contreras wrote in a unique brand of neoclassicism with an emphasis on counterpoint. A great example is the early String Quartet No. 2 (1936). You can follow along with the score while you listen to a performance by the Cuarteto Latinoamericano here.
